Seitan Philly Cheezsteak

What better way to use my leftover pizza sauce and vegan cheeses than on a Philly cheezsteak? I’ve gone long enough living this close to the City of Brotherly Love without making my own version of the sandwich it’s so well known for.

I decided to make the seitan based off this recipe because it’s ridiculously easy. Seriously, if you’re annoyed that your seitan always comes out looking like brains just make this! Many thanks to Kelly Peloza for introducing me to this recipe.

I wanted to set out to make my cheezsteak as authentic as I could, especially since most restaurants I see selling vegan cheezsteaks overload them with vegetables. C’mon, guys, it’s supposed to be UNHEALTHY. Guess that’s what I get for going to Chicago. I’ve heard Govinda’s in Philly has a really good chickn cheezsteak, but I’ve yet to try it!

Anyway, I made a few tweaks to the recipe to make it more “steak-like,” but when I took it out of the oven and tasted a piece it had a chicken nugget-y flavor. So now my cheezsteak has become a chikn cheezsteak. It was also a little dry (that’s what I get for taking the easy way out and baking). So next time I’ll deal with it being dry (it was still good!) and leave out all the peanut butter or just use some Ray’s Seitan. Mmm, Ray’s Seitan.

Enough talk, it’s recipe time!

Seitan Philly [Chikn] Cheezsteak

2/3 cup water
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoons peanut butter
8 tablespoons vital wheat gluten
7 tablespoons nutritional yeast
4 tablespoons whole wheat flour
4 tablespoons white flour
1 tablespoon corn meal
1 teaspoon each: onion powder, garlic salt, and Montreal steak seasoning

Preheat oven to 350F.

In a dry bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. Add the water and mix with a strong fork until almost all of the dry powder is absorbed, being careful not to overmix. Form the dough into a flat shape about 1/2 inch thick.

Heat the peanut butter and mix with olive oil until consistent. Pour mixture on top of dough. Fold dough over and flatten, continuing kneading this way until all of the olive oil and peanut butter is incorporated (this part gets messy!).

Pull apart 1/2-inch strips of dough and place on a lightly greased baking sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. Flip and bake for 10 more minutes. Remove from oven.

Assembly:

Slice a small onion and saute in olive oil over medium heat. Add seitan and a few more dashes Montreal steak seasoning and saute for about 3 minutes, chopping up the seitan into smaller pieces with your spatula.

Move the seitan/onion mixture aside and toast a hoagie roll briefly on the skillet. Spoon some pizza sauce onto the roll, fill with seitan, and top with shredded nondairy cheese of your choice (I tried it with both Daiya and Teese, and both were acceptable). Place in broiler of oven for about 1 minute or until cheese is melted. Enjoy!

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It’s Pizza Friday, #1: The Great “Cheese” Debate

Last weekend I made a batch of pizza dough from Vegan With a Vengeance, split it into four, and froze it. The recipe makes enough dough for 2 pizzas, so the idea was to make a different half-sized pizza each Friday during MoFo.

For week 1, I decided to do my own taste test of the two top vegan cheeses on the US market: Teese and Daiya. I split the dough up yet again to make 3 tiny rectangular pizzas: one for the Teese, one for the Daiya, and one for a blend of the two.

Right out of the oven!

I made my own pizza sauce (also from VWAV) and topped each one with 2 slices of Yves pepperoni… keeping it to one side so I could taste the cheese in all its glory as well as with toppings.

CHEESE #1: TEESE VEGAN CHEESE

Price: $5.59 at Healthy Alternatives for 10 oz.

Stretch:
Very slight. Before I started eating it I tore it in half to see how it stretched and saw some strings of cheesiness, but as it cooled off it did not stretch as much.

Taste:
good, but chemical-y. Not as sweet tasting as the Daiya

Look/Feel:
Before baking, Teese has a very slimy consistency. However, baking dried it up a bit and it had a nicer look and feel when it came out. Very smooth.

CHEESE #2: DAIYA VEGAN CHEESE

Price: $5.59 at Healthy Alternatives for 8 oz

Stretch:
More so than Teese, and stays stretchy for a wider temperature range than does Teese

Taste:
sweet, junk food-y

Look/Feel:
Before baking, Daiya seems dry and crumbly. But don’t let this fool you, because when it melts it gets nice and gooey and you can see a layer of grease on top… just like I remember Domino’s pizza having.

PIZZA #3: HALF & HALF

I thought that this would be the best out of the three, because each cheese brings something a little different to the table both consistency- and taste-wise. However, the first thing I thought when I bit into it was that it tasted like feet. So hey, at least you don’t have to go out and buy two different kinds of cheeses to get the best finished product… you’re better off using just one or the other.

OVERVIEW
The Daiya is easier to use than Teese, because it is already conveniently shredded and bagged. The Teese comes in a somewhat hard-to-open tube and is a bit of a pain to shred since it is so soft right out of the package. But maybe you don’t want your cheese to be shredded, in which case use Teese because you can slice it up for, say, a fancy-looking white pizza or bruschetta.

I didn’t get a good amount of cheese on the Teese pizza, because I figured that the bigger shreds would spread out more when it baked and they didn’t. That made it a little harder for me to judge the Teese than the Daiya. I prefer the Daiya overall, though both cheeses are really good and I’ve known omnis to love pizza with either. Vegan cheese has come a long way in the past few years.

I still have some of each left over, so stay tuned for the next few days as I test them to see how they compare in other recipes!

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The Great Pizza Disaster of 2009

My parents are away for the weekend, so like any teenage girl would, I decide to bust out the cooking skills and blast my (classic rock) music.

Okay, maybe that’s not what your typical 18-year old girl would do when left with the house all to herself for the weekend, but that’s what I did anyway. My friend Mary came back from college this weekend, so I decided to have some friends over and make pizza. I had a really awesome idea for buffalo pizza, for which I had specifically bought Teese when I was in DC, and was excited to make it.

Everything was going very well. I made the dough, made the buffalo tofu (somewhat similar to what I posted a few days ago) and sauce, and assembled the pizza. I put it in the oven for the specified time, and was trying to figure out how I was going to make two different pizzas when I only had one pizza pan (I had enough dough for 2 pizzas, and wanted to make a more standard pizza for those who might not like the buffalo tofu).

When the pizza was ready to come out of the oven, I tried to maneuver it out with hot pads but was not used to a) it being on the bottom rack or b) a 500-degree oven. I almost got it out, and then… the tipping point. The whole damn pizza, pan and all, flipped over and landed upside down on the rack, spilling all of its toppings onto the bottom & door of the oven as well as between the hinges of where the oven opens.

Cue me screaming expletives at the top of my lungs.
Cue me starting to bawl hysterically, frightening my poor kitten half to death.

This is what I spent all day on, using the vegan cheese I can’t (to my knowledge) get anywhere around here, trying to make something nice for my friends, myself, and my blog; ruined. A huge mess that I had no idea how to clean up. I’m not going to lie, my first thought was “how can I salvage this??” But it soon became apparent that salvaging was not an option.

Of course I knew I needed to take a picture of the disaster so I could document it here, but couldn’t remember how to work my camera, I was so hysterical. Ruining food is one of the things I hate the most… Wasting my time, wasting my energy, and most of all wasting the food itself. I had been really excited to see how the pizza would turn out, since it was something new and fun.

40 minutes later, my friends started arriving and, being the most awesome friends in the world that they are, calmed me down and even cleaned my oven (…and floor…) for me. I had put the ruined pizza on a cookie sheet, and was just throwing the tofu on top as I pulled it out of the depths of my oven. We joked that we would feed it to Mike, as he was the last person to arrive.

Mike arrived and we offered the pizza to him, but did not actually feed it to him. We all enjoyed leftover gaycake, and as they were finishing it off I made a second pizza (thankfully I was planning on making two anyway), topped with the rest of the Teese, zucchini, roasted red pepper, and black olives.

This time, I had Mike remove it from the oven for me because I did not trust myself, and it got out of the oven and onto our plates (and into our bellies!) safely and deliciously.

By the end of the night I found myself laughing as hysterically as I had previously been bawling. But damn, I really want to know how my buffalo tofu would’ve turned out… I guess I just need to buy some more Teese.

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